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Still Not Much of a Joke

Thursday, 7 October 2004

I mentioned at the beginning of yesterday’s piece regarding Steve
Ballmer’s recent comments that his quotes may well have been taken out
of context and/or selectively edited for dramatic effect. And, indeed,
there’s a bit of controversy about the way they’ve been reported by
Silicon.com.

For example, the title of Silicon.com’s first article on Ballmer’s
comments was “‘iPod users are music thieves’ says Ballmer”, the
single-quotes implying that Ballmer actually said those words. He
didn’t, and the article has since been retitled “iPod users are music
thieves says Ballmer”, sans quotes. An editor’s note clarifies the
change.

The Guardian Unlimited’s Onlineblog has transcribed his comments with
additional context. I don’t see anything that refutes my analysis of his
comments, however.

Here’s the transcription as reported by The Guardian Unlimited:

Steve Ballmer: Let me first talk about DRM. Now we’ve had DRM
in Windows for quite some number of years, there’s nothing
new about that….

Journalist: [interrupting] Having said that, that hasn’t
stopped, you know, pirates from running rampant….

Ballmer: Of course not: nothing does! I mean, what’s the most
common format of music listened to on an iPod?

Journalist: On an iPod….

Ballmer: Stolen! Stolen!

Journalist: [confused] On an iPod?

Ballmer: Yes. Most people still steal music. [laughing] The fact
that you can buy it and it’s protected doesn’t affect the
fact that most people still steal [music]. I’d LOVE to say
all problems have been solved, whether it’s iPod/iTunes —
where Apple has done some nice work, no doubt about it — but
the truth of the matter is we can build these technologies,
but as long as there’s alternate forms of music acquisition,
there still will be ways for people to steal music.

Ballmer clearly claimed that most music on iPods is “stolen”, and
implies that the iPod’s support for non-DRM-protected music is a
“problem”. If this is really what he believes, he has no idea why the
iPod is so amazingly popular.